The Doppelgängers: Making a Myth

21 Jul, 2026

This is a kind of chaser to my post describing the Rainlands subregion of the Woland collaborative Mythic Bastionland realm.

In the MB campaign I'm in, our knights have just recently arrived back in their Realm from the realm of the fae. Due to portal shenanigans, an entire age had passed during the week or so the knights were gone, and even though it was just the result of a fumbled luck roll, I think this is great dramatic fodder. It reminds me a lot of the whole "King Arthur coming back to reclaim his throne" thing, but it also reminded me of something else. When the Gilded Knight first arrived at a keep and announced himself, the response was "You can't be the Gilded Knight; that guy's dead," and that sort of dissociative horror reminds me of the bit in Part II of Don Quixote where there's an impostor going around pretending to be Don Quixote, and the real guy keeps bumping into people telling him about things he's supposedly done.¹ I was actually surprised there was no "Impostor" or "Doppelgänger" myth that I could find either in the rulebook or from third-party sources. I am trying to avoid spoiling myself while I'm still in a campaign of MB, so apologies if I step on anyone else's toes accidentally.

Analyzing the Myths

The most recent episode of the Smiling Fox podcast (it's great, check it out) is about the construction of myths in Mythic Bastionland. In addition to listening to that, I went through some of the myths that had already been completed in our game to get a feel for the progression of Omens.

The first Omen of a Myth tends to be a fairly obvious signpost that the Myth has begun. For instance, the first Omen of the Eye is literally the knights dreaming about a big eye. Surreal, yes, but it doesn't get more clear than that.

The second Omen is often (but not always) a chance for the knights to protect the weak, showing the impact of the Myth (at an early stage) on the peasantry. You could replace this, or extend it through Omen 5, by asking this question of different classes of beings in the realm ("how does this affect the Seers? how does this affect the knights? how does this affect plant/animal life?")

The third Omen is often something strange and surreal. Occasionally, this is the second or fourth Omen instead, but there should be at least one Omen that feels suitably mythic, or like something that might happen in a fairy tale.

The fourth Omen often represents the failure of existing powers to deal with the Myth or a powerful foe representing the threat the Myth poses (especially for more nature-focused Myths).

The fifth Omen is often a mob, showing the discontent of those failed by the knights and the nobility. Sometimes, it is instead something which ushers in or heralds the final Omen.

The sixth and last Omen of a Myth is something catastrophic, the culmination of the disaster the knights should have been able to prevent. Often this entails the death of a Seer, a threat to the Seat of Power, or the mass loss of innocent life.

An easy way to think of this is:

1. The Sign
2. The Weak
3. The Strange
4. The Corrupt or The Brutal
5. The Mob or The Herald
6. The Doomed

For each Myth, there's also a short list of statblocks for characters mentioned in Omens and two 2d6 tables to further characterize or randomize elements of the Myth's appearance.

With that said, let's make our Myth.

The Doppelgängers

It takes knight's form with spite and glee

And fools all those who cannot see

Omens

1. After following the knights for a while, a flock of cuckoos (one per PC) lands near them. Each bird calls out the name of a different knight in the party and departs.
2. A foppish rake greets a knight warmly, claiming to have recently lost a large sum to them gambling. He sheepishly asks if there's anything he can do to get the money back.
3. An old woman spits at a knight's feet. She claims the knights stayed with her neighbors, a family of poor farmers, and ate them out of house and home.
4. The knights lose their shadows and reflections.
5. A Knight leads a warband of men-at-arms to arrest the party and take them to the Seat of Power for trial. The charge is robbing villages and travelers at swordpoint.
6. The Doppelgängers show up to duel their "false impostors."

Cast

Yanus, Foppish Rake

• 4 VIG, 11 CLA, 6 SPI, 5 GD
• Stiletto (d6)

Dola, Outraged Old Woman

• 5 VIG, 5 CLA, 8 SPI, 4 GD
• Unarmed

The Doppelgängers

• Virtues equivalent to PCs' but shuffled (see below). 1GD.
• Identical to PCs except for distinctive feature (see below).
• Mundane copies of PC equipment. Capable of Feats after Omen 4.

The Doppelgängers

Reflection

As you might notice, I cheated a little bit from my own system, but it still follows the broad strokes and the idea of the Omens progressively getting more urgent. I became enamored with the idea that these weren't just random impostors but animals that had somehow adopted human form, and cuckoos are perfect for that since, in real life, they disguise their eggs as another bird's.

Overall, I think this Myth is pretty simplistic, but I think it fills a niche I haven't seen elsewhere. Feel free to use it in your games and tell me what you think.

Footnotes

#mythic bastionland #osr